Canada’s McMaster University researchers have invented a suite of tests that enable food packages to signal if their contents are contaminated. They are now working to bring producers and regulators together to scale and commercialize their inventions to prevent illness and combat food waste.

The monitoring technologies are made to read biochemical signals from common culprits in spoilage, such as Listeria, Salmonella and E. Coli, using readily adaptable platforms. But the researchers say getting the technologies into the marketplace has been challenging.

“On the one hand, people want to have safe food to eat. On the other hand, they don’t want to pay more for their food because prices are already high and only seem to be climbing higher,” says the paper’s corresponding author, Tohid Didar, a biomedical engineer and entrepreneur.

“We are eager to make people aware of the existing challenges and start a conversation between researchers, policymakers, corporations and consumers to work together to develop solutions for such challenges.”

The current practice of marking fresh foods with a best-before or consume-by date is arbitrary and “far too conservative,” the researchers say, often causing safe food to be wasted, which imposes “enormous” costs that producers and consumers are already paying for, directly or indirectly.

Changing the calendar-based food freshness and safety system to a detection-based system will be a considerable effort, but the inventors say it is time to bring the technology up to date.

Packaging for biomonitoring
The authors, including faculty members Yingfu Li, Zeinab Hosseinidoust and Carlos Filipe, have been working with producers in North America and Europe and government regulators, including the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

Since 2018, the group of McMaster engineers and biochemists behind nclick="updateothersitehits('Articlepage','External','OtherSitelink','Biochemists call for commercial testing collaboration for smart food packaging capable of real-time biomonitoring','Biochemists call for commercial testing collaboration for smart food packaging capable of real-time biomonitoring','340804','http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s44222-024-00190-5', 'article','Biochemists call for commercial testing collaboration for smart food packaging capable of real-time biomonitoring');return no_reload();">the paper has invented and proven the viability of several packaging-based methods for detecting or halting spoilage, including sentinel wrap, which is a plastic wrapping that can detect and visibly signal when contents such as meat, cheese or produce have spoiled.

A hand-held test that produces real-time results allows wholesalers and retailers to use unique readers to detect, isolate and withdraw specific lots of spoiled goods before they can be sold, avoiding recalls that affect entire food categories.

The scientists also developed a lab-on-a-package — a tiny, self-activating test incorporated into a tray of chicken, fish or meat, for example, which produces a visible signal when a product has spoiled, and a sprayable, food-safe gel composed of beneficial, organic bacteriophages, which eliminates harmful bacteria that cause food contamination.

“It’s one thing to do research in the lab, publish papers and file patents, but it’s another to have a product that’s tangible — that people can use,” says the paper’s lead author Shadman Khan, a PhD candidate and Vanier Scholar in Didar’s lab.

“We are building a collaborative network with government regulators and industrial partners. This allows us to see the big-picture issues and adapt to what we learn will and won’t work.”